In 1928, Italian architect and designer Gio Ponti launched his magazine Domus, aiming at promoting new insights in architecture and the applied arts. In this magazine, he wanted to showcase modern style architecture and interior design applied by Italian artists.
When one of the contributors to Domus, Gustavo Pulitzer Finali (1887-1967) won the competition for designing the interiors of the new ocean liner Victoria (1931) to be built for Lloyd Triestino, Ponti himself was only involved in the design of the second class bar and the tiles used on the walls of the first class dining room. Victoria was a huge succes and marked a radical change from the interior design of Italian passenger ships up till then as she was the first vessel ever to have been designed in a contemporary style. Her decor was a far cry from the historical over the top designs by the famous Coppede Brothers Gino (1866 – 1927), Adolfo (1871 – 1951) and Carlo (1868 – 1956) from Florence which had predominated until that moment.
The Conte di Savoia of the Lloyd Sabaudo in followed in 1932. Again it was Pulitzer jaar who designed her interiors, this time in the Novecento-style, the Italian version of Art Deco. The entire March 1933 edition of Ponti’s magazine Domus was completely dedicated to this new spectacular liner.
After the war, Italy’s passenger fleet needed to be rebuilt and most of this was financed by the Marshall Plan, an American initiative enacted in 1948 to provide foreign aid to Western Europe.
At a rapid pace, new Italian liners were delivered for service all over the globe. This time, the competition and contracts was were won by a group of architects, among them Ponti, Pulitzer and Zoncada (1898-1988).
Just after the war, in 1948 Ponti and Zoncada were involved in the refitting of Conte Biancamano and Conte Grande as their luxury interiors had been totally worn out during their wartime duties as troop transports fort he US Navy. With the refit of the Conte Grande Ponti and Zoncada set new standards for (Italian) passenger ship design just as the French line had done with Ile de France (1926) and Normandie (1932) before the second world war. Ponti wanted to show the world what Italian designers, artists and craftsmen were capable of. He saw ocean liners as ambassadors of Italy, showwcasing Italian culture and make clear to the worrld that Italy had changed from a belligerent country during World War 2 to a modern, positive nation. Interior decorators, glass artists, painters and ceramisists which he had already given a stage in his magazine Domus all worked together on Conte Grande’s interiors, bringing them in line with modern times.
Ponti and Zoncada were awareded the contracts for designing the grand salons of the Giulio Cesare in 1951 and Andrea Doria in 1953 destined for Latin American and North America service and they also worked on part of the interiors of Oceania (1951), Neptunia (1951) and Africa (1952) built for the service to Australia and Africa.
When Ponti and Zoncada started with the designs of the fist class public rooms of Giulio Cesare they adopted a new way of working: they started the design of each lounge with a pure base colour and from there artworks etc. were added complementing the design. For example, the ballroom had golden yellow, the bar light blue and the main lounge red as base colour.
In general, Ponti often used materials such as gold and silver, anodized aluminium, glass and light-coloured woods like walnut, chestnut and oak in his designs.
Concerning Andrea Doria, Ponti was yet again involved in just the artwork in the ship’s decor. The Italian Line had invited competition for the design of the public spaces and cabins of the ship and the winning designs for her first class rooms were thos of Ponti and Zoncada. Forward of the first class staircase, there were four luxury suites and the owners Italian Line awarded the design of each of them to different interior architects. Ponti, Zoncada, Minoletti and Puchand each took a different approach. One of them was done by Ponti and this time he made a statement with his design of the Zodiac Suite as he called it which was based on the signs of the zodiac and the constellations. He had artisan Piero Fornasetti design the graphics which could literally befound everywhere, on the walls, the furniture upholstery, bedspreads etc.
The main public room Ponte designed onboard Andrea Doria’s was her first class lounge where he had a large mural painted by Salvatore Fiume “la Leggenda d’Italia – the Legend of Italy showing an imaginary town-square where artworks of the most important Italian masters were on display. In this modern setting Ponti showed the world Italy’s historic art masterpieces. He was of the opinion that contemporary art should play an important representational role on board Andrea Doria.
However, although Ponti had made a name for himself designing ocean liner interiors, he had thus far been involved with only individual spaces on each ship. His ultimate goal was designing the interiors of an entire vessel, but sadly this never happened.
His work outside of the shipping industry is equally impressive. Examples hereof are the Pirelli Tower in Milan and the Villa Planchart in Caracas, a house designed as a work of art on the heights of the capital, surrounded by in a tropical garden and countless other buildings.
So from the late 1950’s onwards, disappointed, he turned his attention to land-based projects because as Ponti put it “the individual spaces he would design would only produce superficial aestethic effects”.
In all, Ponti’s work regarding ocean liner interiors stretches from just after World War II until 1953, but during this relatively short time-span, together with Pulitzer and Zoncada, he clearly left his mark on the design of Italian ocean liners of that era.
